this sucks, I thought this was a unique I idea I was going to use as a link building strategy. . .I didn't know everybody else is already doing it!!
Please share with us too . I tried sponsoring a few themes. Not really impressed. My observations: 1. Many people download themes just to test them. They may download a dozen themes and then choose one. So number of downloads is not a reliable indicator of number of people using the theme. 2. Unless the theme is a very attractive one, most probably, it won't be used for too long. Many people change themes frequently. 3. If there are too many sponsored links, the probability of these being removed is higher. 4. There are too many blogs on the internet..most of them without any PR or having a low PR. Most of the links I have got are from PR0-PR2 blogs. 5. The actually number of blogs using themes for the long term is barely 5%-10%. As new versions of wordpress are introduced, older themes may become obsolete.
Check out the results of this poll: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2360998 I think you will find that people who care about their blog and maintain it well are probably more likely to be the ones who update their themes more often. There's also the question of fashion. Right now I'm seeing a lot of Web 2.0 designs, with the stripes, big buttons and so on. If your theme is anything like that, then by next year it will be looking old and people will be looking to change it for something a bit different.
all theme coders must double read the license that comes with Wordpress..... I remember reading somewhere that selling sponsored links doesn't comply with wordpress license or something.
thats nice, there's no limit, can go upto 2k downloads too. important thing is how many links are there with your sponsorship.
Total themes distributed: 2 (but 2 versions of the first) Links showing in Google with original anchor text from theme A: 277 Blogs linking in Technorati: 159 --- I've received veryyyy different results. And one of the guys on my list is in the Technorati top 200 from WP themes and plugins. One observation... your theme has to actually be good. You can't hire some crappy designer from GAF and expect backlinks. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="powered+by+wordpress+and+jetpacked"&btnG=Google+Search This is from 1 theme we did. We use different anchor text for every theme. Currently Yahoo shows around 5,000 backlinks for us and the only link building method we've used on this domain is Wordpress themes. If you get all of 10 links you're doing something wrong, either your theme isn't appealing or you've got way too spammy of sponsored text would be my guess. We also have 159 blogs in technorati linking to us right now: http://technorati.com/search/www.jetpacked.com Advice: - Do not take a OSWD theme and convert it to WP then sponsor it, theme dirs HATE this and will most likely not even share your theme. - DO NOT HIDE LINKS - dirs hate this and users hate it more... not to mention Google will penalize you if you're caught doing it much. See: matt cutts blog - Design something original and appealing - Don't go overboard with long link text or large sponsorships See my post regarding this: http://www.jetpacked.com/advantages-of-a-custom-blogging-theme-with-or-without-a-blog/ Happy Theme Building, Todd Dickerson
Use images instead of text to linkback to your site, usually they won't remove it not to ruin the "design" even though its pretty easy to do it.
Also, it depends on how the license is termed for the usage of the theme. If no license is available, most people would assume it's released under "creative common license" (or whatever terms, I'm not really familiar with these terms though), which makes it not compulsory to retain certain links. Just make sure the theme owner specifically states in a seperate license file that all links are to be retained. But that will also not stop people from removing links, but it'll reduced the possibility for sure.
yea 10 is too easy. chk this one >> 921 downloads http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/2538/jws-common-10/ design matters a lot, i found some who even change the design and take off the links, but very few of them do that, since general wp users wont spend tht much time riping things around
Exactly. I have noticed a huge amount of backlinks, increase and rankings and soon an increase in PR, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time and money.
that hidden link thing is so bad - dirty in fact. That's grey hat to me.....when I download a theme I download and use based on how it looks, and sure the footer and links play a part in whether I'll use it or not (+ the design of course). But I was using the www. bad-neighborhood .com tool, and it showed me my theme had a hidden link right away, and I was very pissed, 'cause I didn't know it was there - and was in every post, and could have really affected my site. I left the rest of the footer links - got no problem with that. But I felt pretty violated with the hidden link, and I will never use another WP theme without quickly checking the 'neighborhood' first.
Come on Katy, tell us. That could be very valuable information for all the people who purchase sponsorship links.